The Stretch 4: What to expect in the opener of the Steven Pearl Era
Here's our breakdown of Auburn basketball's matchup against a slash-and-dash Bethune-Cookman team with NCAA Tournament dreams.
AUBURN — In the lead-up to what would be his final season opener as the head coach at Auburn, Bruce Pearl warned that “Vermont is very Yale-like, which should concern us all.”
Auburn’s last competitive game prior to that one, of course, was the first-round NCAA Tournament upset at the hands of Yale that ended what could have been a red-hot run before it even began. The Tigers entered the new season projected to beat the America East favorite Catamounts by around 17 points — then won by 51 instead.
Recently, in the lead-up to what would be his first season opener as the head coach at Auburn, Steven Pearl showed that the apple didn’t far fall from the coaching tree when previewing Monday night’s matchup against Bethune-Cookman.
“This is a team that was picked in the preseason to win their league,” Pearl said Friday. “They twice beat an Alabama State team that, if you don’t remember, with like four minutes left in the first half of the NCAA Tournament (first round), it was a 1-point game. And, if we hadn’t kind of gotten lucky at the end of that half and gone on a little bit of a run to get up by 9, like, that probably stays a close game.”
Auburn went on to beat Alabama State by 20 — the opening act in a memorable run that carried the Tigers all the way to the Final Four, cementing that squad’s legacy as the greatest team in program history.
Now, seven months after that Final Four finish in San Antonio, Auburn is set to return to action — this time with a new head coach and an almost entirely new roster. Only one player from last season’s rotation has returned.
Don’t expect another 51-point avalanche in this year’s opener. That was an outlier performance by an experienced squad that simply couldn’t miss. It also marked the start of a down season for Vermont, which neither won the America East regular-season title nor earned an NCAA Tournament bid.
This year’s Auburn team is much different — a new-look roster under a first-time head coach, projected to battle for a spot in the SEC’s top half. This time last year, the computers considered the Tigers a top-5 team nationally.
According to KenPom, Auburn enters as a 23-point favorite over Bethune-Cookman, the preseason SWAC favorite. The visiting Wildcats sit at No. 236 in the preseason ratings, which is higher than where Vermont and three other paycheck opponents for the Tigers finished last season.
Pearl sees Monday’s game as the perfect early test. Auburn rebounded from a high-scoring overtime loss to Oklahoma State with a dominant win over Memphis to round out exhibition play — and now faces a team that doesn’t look like a typical SWAC opponent.
“You’re going to look at this team and say, ‘That is not a SWAC team, they have the size of an SEC team,’” Pearl said. “So you’re going to look down there and be like, ‘Alright, they got dudes that can play.’ It’ll be a great test for our guys in Game 1.”
To get you fully prepared for Auburn’s season opener against Bethune-Cookman on Monday night — including a rundown of the Wildcats to know and the matchup breakdown — here is this week’s edition of The Stretch 4.
Auburn’s perimeter defense will get tested again
After allowing too many clean drives and easy looks at the basket in its first exhibition against Oklahoma State in Birmingham, Auburn spent the next two weeks tightening up its perimeter defense.
The focus paid off, as Memphis shot just 36.8% from the field and committed an astounding 23 turnovers. Auburn did a much better job of staying in passing lanes and gaps, shutting down a normally relentless dribble-drive attack.
“Before the game, we were all just talking about how much pride we had to take in playing defense against them, because they like to get downhill and touch the paint,” small forward Elyjah Freeman said. “We just had to keep them out of the paint the whole game. When teams can get to the paint, it breaks down the whole defense.”
Auburn should expect Bethune-Cookman to employ a similar strategy, because former NBA All-Star and school athletic director Reggie Theus has a roster built to slash-and-dash.